A new beginning
When her oldest companion placed her soul in a mortal body, Hannah Tallerin thought her problems were over. No longer a vampire, she is free to live her life with her beloved elf, free from the commitments of her old existence, free to build a new future with her husband in a small town at the edge of the world.

An unexpected arrival
Then the original owner of the body wakes up, so Hannah turns to her oldest friend for answers. As the voice in her head gets more insistent, her once-betrothed offers his help, though Hannah knows that any aid from him comes at a price.

A final battle
The battle for her soul has begun, but when the real enemies arrive, Hannah realizes she will have to fight for her body as well.

I’m finishing up the second novel in the Klauden’s Ring series, and I’m struggling with the cliffhanger not-so-happily-ever-after ending that this middle book seems to require.

My characters have overcome some major challenges in this one. Lives have been shattered, vows have been broken, loyalties have been strained. But they are still standing. Mostly.

And I, the reader who LOVES her happy endings, who will get so frustrated with a sad ending that I have been known to toss a paperback across the room in a fit of rage–I find myself heading inevitably in that direction. It’s not all going to work out perfectly in this one. Life is too messy, issues too unresolved, truths just barely beginning to show themselves.

I know it has to happen this way. I know that there has to be struggle before the happy ending can come and actually feel like it’s been earned–and Peter S. Beagle taught me that happy endings can never happen in the middle of a story. If they can happen at all–because nothing ever really ends.

No worries, though, dear followers of Hannah and Rory. They will return in book three, battered, a little bedraggled and beaten, but they shall return, and I promise that book three does have an ending (and spoiler: it will be happy one…for most of them). But as someone heading directly towards the Empire Strikes Back ending, I apologize in advance. But sometimes, characters have to struggle, have to weather the storm, and then the next, before they can actually get to the end of the road, or as King puts it, the inevitable clearing at the end of the path.

The road goes ever on and on, down from the door where it began, but for now, this is a dark part of the path, and if we are to truly appreciate the sunlight to be found on the other side, we need to follow them now through these tangled trees, even though this whole forest looks ready to reach out and strangle us.